What’s In A Name

August 27, 2008

I have seen a few instances recently of policy decisions gone bad. And both related to last names.

I finally decided to sign up for Facebook last week. Unfortunately, as I tried to sign up I got a message that said, “Our automatic signup process has rejected your name.” What!!! Apparently, my last name has some inference of drug use. Facebook can’t have that, so they have a policy of no usernames with the word “high”. As of writing this post, I still haven’t been allowed to open a Facebook account.

Another policy decision gone wrong is from the American Family Association. They have a Christian news outlet website called OneNewsNow.com. They decided to automatically review all of the AP news articles that are published on their website and replace the word “gay” with “homosexual”. Here is the result of that decision.

This article is about American sprinter Tyson Homosexual, formerly known as Tyson Gay.